University
Launches Half-a-Billion Dollar Research Initiative Aimed at
Health Science

By Robert
Sanders, Public Affairs
Posted October 6, 1999

Launching a bold new effort to understand and solve
today's major health problems, Berkeley is redefining health
science research by uniting physical and biological
scientists and engineers.

Berkeley's new Health Sciences Initiative promises to
stimulate new developments in cancer treatment, medical
imaging, therapies for brain and spinal cord injuries, and
the understanding and treatment of genetic and infectious
diseases and the onset of dementias in old age.

Sparked by a revolution in which physical tools
increasingly are applied to the biological sciences in areas
such as non-invasive imaging, microscopy and nanotechnology,
Berkeley plans to involve as many as 400 researchers -- from
fields including the biological sciences, public health,
psychology, physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and
computer science -- in interdisciplinary research.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory also will participate in this
collaborative effort.

"We're setting the national agenda for the next century,"
said Robert Tjian, one of the leaders of the initiative and
a professor in the Department of Molecular & Cell
Biology. "This is a major shift in what biologists have
traditionally done. Modern biologists of the 21st century
will have to embrace all these other areas, because many of
tomorrow's important breakthroughs in biology will occur at
the convergence of these diverse fields."

"The advantages to society are enormous," said Daniel E.
Koshland Jr., professor and biochemist who also is heading
up the initiative. "Our goal of encouraging interaction
among many disciplines, from physics to psychology, is a
wonderful challenge.

The central focus of this half-a-billion dollar
initiative will be proposed new facilities to be built at a
cost of some $300 million, the bulk of it to come from
private donations. The campus already has raised $124
million of that amount in private and public funds, of which
$50 million -- the single largest gift ever received by
Berkeley -- came this summer from an anonymous donor. An
additional $200 million spent on new faculty hires,
equipment and research will bring the initiative's total
cost to more than $500 million.

These new facilities will house many of the new tools and
technologies being applied to the health sciences. These
tools include gene chips, cryo-electron microscopes,
bioMEMS, novel materials, state-of-the-art magnetic
resonance imagers and parallel computers.

Work
in Berkeley's various laboratories will be tied
together in an effort to solve today's major health
problems.

The tools will help researchers advance disease prevention
and diagnosis; drug design and development; patient
evaluation and therapy. Which basic research projects will
lead to such advances cannot always be foreseen, however.

Immunologist James Allison, for example, was interested
in how the cells of the immune system work, but that
curiosity led him to a new immune therapy that soon will
enter clinical trials against prostate cancer and melanoma.

Physical chemist Alexander Pines made his reputation
developing novel techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance
for the study of molecules and materials, but his work has
also led to advances in medical applications of diagnostic
magnetic resonance imaging.

And mechanical engineer Lisa Pruitt is applying her
interest in how plastic polymers break down under repeated
stress to a growing medical problem, the breakdown of
artificial joints.

Traditionally, such health care advances have come from
medical schools. But today, some of the most exciting work
in biomedicine is happening at the boundary of disciplines
not found on a typical medical campus.

"Broad-based universities like UC Berkeley can bring to
the health care table something that most medical schools
cannot -- physicists, chemists and engineers trained on the
edge of biology and eager to work closely with health
scientists," said Chancellor Berdahl. "One of Berkeley's
core goals is that our research serve the public trust, and
this new initiative will enhance and prolong people's
lives."

In the past, Berkeley has not been viewed as a health
sciences campus, although much of the research on campus has
a biomedical connection. Clear evidence of that connection
was the $129.5 million in research funds given to Berkeley
in fiscal year 1998-99 by the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. That amount represents 44 percent of all
federal research dollars to the campus.

"All these fields can have an interest in health, and
that is where the real opportunities lie," said Edward
Penhoet, dean of the School of Public Health and one of the
founders of biotechnology giant Chiron Corp. "We can work to
facilitate the transfer of new breakthroughs into practice."

"One
of Berkeley's core goals is that our research serve
the public trust, and this new initiative will
enhance and prolong people's lives."

-Chancellor
Berdahl

Among Berkeley's health-oriented programs are the
56-year-old School of Public Health, ranked among the best
in the country, and the only public health school located at
a major university that is not attached to a medical school;
and the 75-year-old School of Optometry, which conducts
basic research in vision while also running a clinical eye
care program. The campus has seven Howard Hughes Medical
Institute investigators, the most of any university without
a medical school, plus long-term cooperative projects with
physicians and researchers at UC San Francisco.

Berkeley's interdisciplinary approach advanced again last
year with the establishment of a new Department of
Bioengineering -- the first step in the plan for a unique
two-campus department with UCSF. Berkeley engineers and UCSF
physicians have collaborated on biomedical research for
decades. The department expands and focuses education in the
field and opens new avenues for progress in imaging, design
of artificial tissues and joints, bioMEMS, minimally
invasive surgery and other areas.

Research in neuroscience and protein structure -- two
large academic concentrations on campus -- also have been
traditional sources of fundamental findings for advances in
medical treatment.

Berkeley students will benefit from the Health Sciences
Initiative, which will require a rethinking of undergraduate
science education. Students preparing for health science
research will need knowledge of a broad range of
disciplines, not just biology, and cutting-edge training in
everything from bioinformatics -- the science of mining
databases like the Human Genome Project -- to gene
profiling.

Interdisciplinary
research among various departments will help
advance disease prevention and diagnosis. This is
the central component of Berkeley's new $500
million Health Sciences Initiative.

Berkeley's push toward a new agenda for biomedical research
dovetails with a new agenda of the National Institutes of
Health, which plans to engage the physical sciences and
engineering in medical research in areas such as biomedical
imaging, rational drug design and structural biology.

The NIH also is investing more money in research that
utilizes the results of the Human Genome Project, a joint
effort by NIH and Department of Engergy that promises to
sequence the full human genome by next year. Once the
sequencing is done, someone must translate a gene defect's
linkage with a disease into how that defect actually causes
the disease. Berkeley has some of the best scientists to
take on this task.

For example, computer scientists and bioengineers are
working to develop the necessary computational tools to
manipulate the large databases being created by the genome
project. The Health Sciences Initiative also will emphasize
genomics and proteomics -- the study of genes and proteins,
respectively, as causes or cures of disease.

Berkeley can lead the way through its close proximity to
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Koshland said.
Collaborations are planned with its medical imaging group
and its Physical Biosciences Division, headed by chemist
Graham Fleming. The two-year-old division was designed to
foster stronger interactions with the campus in the physical
and biological sciences.

Tjian emphasizes that the initiative is not just a
theoretical reorganization. Rather, it creates a new level
of interaction on campus -- a "lab without walls" -- that
people and departments care enough about to pool their
efforts, money and space. Even the College of Natural
Resources, traditionally oriented toward agriculture and
plant biology, is eager to participate in the initiative.

"This initiative is more than anything about synergy,"
Penhoet added. "It's about departments working together to
advance health care in the next century."

New Facilities

The new facilities slated for the east end of campus will
combine biomedical and health sciences research, bringing
together molecular biologists, neuroscientists,
psychologists, infectious disease and cancer experts, and
public health specialists.

A research building proposed for the site where Stanley
Hall is now will house programs in molecular engineering and
bioengineering, where engineers, chemists and physicists
will work alongside molecular biologists and medical
doctors. An anonymous donor has contributed $50 million to
construction of this building, with an additional $10
million coming from Intel co-founder and chairman emeritus
Gordon Moore. State funds total an additional $24 million.